Just How Many Allomantic Metals Are There?

[+Invocation]

There's the base 16, plus the 16 godmetals (which I think has been said each could be burned by a Mistborn, but if I'm wrong, correct me), the other 16 that can be created by Compounders that might technically be a different metal because perception or something/that's how it's explained in-world by Sazed, and the alloys to each of the godmetals with each of the other metals to form metals that do different things, and maybe even the alloys godmetals could have with each other. That's... a lot of metals. Am I thinking about this correctly?

[HSuperLee he/him]

Sanderson has alluded to it not being as simple as you may think for Mistborn to burn the god metals. I can't look up the WoB at this time (cough cough nudge nudge Arcanum people please help) but I believe he said it would take some work. But yes, we have the base 16, plus 2, maybe possibly 3 god metals confirmed (harmonium is the maybe possibly,) plus 32 god metal alloys. So we're at about 52 confirmed metals, with a possibility of 68 if harmonium alloys can be made. So, yeah. Mistborn have a lot of potential metals to burn.

[+Invocation]

53 minutes ago, HSuperLee said:

Sanderson has alluded to it not being as simple as you may think for Mistborn to burn the god metals. I can't look up the WoB at this time (cough cough nudge nudge Arcanum people please help) but I believe he said it would take some work. But yes, we have the base 16, plus 2, maybe possibly 3 god metals confirmed (harmonium is the maybe possibly,) plus 32 god metal alloys. So we're at about 52 confirmed metals, with a possibility of 68 if harmonium alloys can be made. So, yeah. Mistborn have a lot of potential metals to burn.

Probably the difficulties would be getting Connection enough to the Shard to be able to "hack" Allomancy to be powered by that Investiture instead of the norm. That's still a LOT of metals.

[StanLemon]

Questioner

 [PENDING REVIEW]

Can an Allomancer burn any god metal? Or is it specifically Preservation and Ruin?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

That is actually a RAFO. There's some funkyness going on there.

[Calderis he/him]

This one is especially pertinent. 

Quote

word_thief

What would happen if a Mistborn ingested the metal of a Shardblade/plate?

Brandon Sanderson

A shardblade is invested. A Mistborn isn't likely to have a tie to that type of Investiture. So probably nothing would happen…

source

The wording all implies that if there was a connection to that Investiture, something could happen... 

[Leyrann]

16 metals.

17 godmetals (don't forget harmonium).

Every godmetal has an alloy with every metal. 272 alloys.

Assuming godmetals can't alloy with one another, that's 305 combinations.

 

Also that 17 is ugly, so perhaps harmonium is an atium-lerasium alloy? In that case godmetals can alloy with one another, let's assume they can with any other, but no triple or more alloys. In that case, there are 17*8=136 godmetal alloys.

Can they alloy with normal metals? If not, there are 256 (note that harmonium, in this case, can't alloy either, as assumed for the 272) pure godmetal-metal alloys plus the 16 normal and 136 godmetal alloys, for 408 alloys.

If they can, there are 136*16=2176 alloys metal-godmetal alloys on top of that, for a total of 2584 metals and alloys. (8 metals, 8 normal alloys, 16 godmetals, 136 godmetal-godmetal alloys, 256 metal-godmetal alloys, 2176 godmetal alloy-metal alloys)

[Yata he/him]

6 minutes ago, Leyrann said:

Assuming godmetals can't alloy with one another, that's 305 combinations.

We knows it's possible for the WoB about the effect of an Atium-Lerasium alloy and the Lerasium-Bavadium Alloy.

7 minutes ago, Leyrann said:

Also that 17 is ugly, so perhaps harmonium is an atium-lerasium alloy? 

Harmonium is not an alloy of the two but rather a new element  made by both Ruin and Pres... There is a WoB on that too.

And of course there is the huge component (that others already pointed) on the inability of the usual Metalborn to burn something from a Shard he has no connection with.

[Leyrann]

19 minutes ago, Yata said:

We knows it's possible for the WoB about the effect of an Atium-Lerasium alloy and the Lerasium-Bavadium Alloy.

Harmonium is not an alloy of the two but rather a new element  made by both Ruin and Pres... There is a WoB on that too.

And of course there is the huge component (that others already pointed) on the inability of the usual Metalborn to burn something from a Shard he has no connection with.

So that means that 1. There's 17 godmetals if you include all of atium, lerasium and harmonium and 2. Godmetals can alloy with each other?

Oh man, that makes the numbers so much more ugly.

[Yata he/him]

40 minutes ago, Leyrann said:

So that means that 1. There's 17 godmetals if you include all of atium, lerasium and harmonium and 2. Godmetals can alloy with each other?

Oh man, that makes the numbers so much more ugly.

It's a bit more complex than "17 godmetals" because in theory different Vessels's metals also with the same Shard could result in slighty different godmetal (example. Vinium would act differently from Lerasium) and in theory we don't even know if different Avatar of the same Vessel would result in different godmetals (Example: we don't know if Bavadinium and Pajium could be differents).... Mostly reasoning on hipotetical godmetals is a moot point

[Leyrann]

9 minutes ago, Yata said:

It's a bit more complex than "17 godmetals" because in theory different Vessels's metals also with the same Shard could result in slighty different godmetal (example. Vinium would act differently from Lerasium) and in theory we don't even know if different Avatar of the same Vessel would result in different godmetals (Example: we don't know if Bavadinium and Pajium could be differents).... Mostly reasoning on hipotetical godmetals is a moot point

So we just have "infinity" instead.